Painting honors slain ice cream vendor

Sunday

Nov 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 25, 2007 at 7:53 AM

Christopher Sabathne, a retired phone company worker, painted a 20-by-30-inch picture of Isidro Duran selling his ice cream and fruit bars after a soccer game, then gave it to Duran's daughter. He painted it from a photograph he took in 2003 at Kennedy School’s soccer fields.

Betsy Lopez Fritscher

After ice cream vendor Isidro Duran was shot and killed selling his fruit bars in the city’s southwest side in July, his daughter, Adriana, was angry.

She grew more and more disillusioned with life and asked herself, her family and God why it happened.

Four months later, the 22-year-old Woodstock resident said she has been able to forgive a little more after seeing the positive reaction from local residents. She feels like her father did not die in vain, she said.

“I was mad when (it) happened,” she said. “With all these (changes) that we are seeing in the community, I see that my dad did not leave in vain. Something good came out of it.”

The proof her father was well-liked in the neighborhoods where he sold his ice cream bars came Nov. 14, when Christopher Sabathne of Rockton offered Adriana a gift — a glimpse of her dad’s work.

Sabathne, a retired phone company worker, painted a 20-by-30-inch picture of her father selling his ice cream and fruit bars after a soccer game. He painted it from a photograph he took in 2003 at Kennedy School’s soccer fields.

“After I took the picture ... I knew that some day I would paint it,” Sabathne said. “I met (Duran) a couple of times when I bought ice cream from him. He was a good gentleman. What happened was so stupid.”

Sabathne worked a couple of years on his painting before Duran’s death. When Sabathne realized that the person in his photo was the man who was killed, he finished it in short order and offered it to Duran’s family just in time for the holidays.

“Maybe I will hang it in my living room,” said Adriana, as she studied the painting with her daughter, Dariana Urbina, 2. “This (Thanksgiving) I am grateful for this. He painted it with the idea that it was my father.”